Ideas of Sin

by Cooper, R.

  James could see that her head was turned, from the angle of her headdress, but he could not see even the tip of her nose, just her hands as she dropped the burnt stick and adopted a pose of prayer, as though the candle’s flame were now an object of devotion.

  “He is….quite small.” “His life has not been easy.” Truth had always the feel of a blade at his skin, the sting of a dull razor, or the slow torment of aboucan cutting holes in flesh. “I have only now seen…” He could not finish, his voice leaving him to gesture with his hands. She could not see him, he knew, and tried to cough to ease his throat’s tightness.

  “He would hide from you, when you seek only to help,” she finished his thought as though she had known his mind, and turned at last, inhaling softly through her nose and letting her eyes close. James licked his lips, his heart beating hard against his sides for several breaths, and then felt it seem to lurch and stop, pushing him forward until he nearly fell.

  “I am a fool,” he confessed, grateful that she kept her eyes closed and let the shadows stay between them. “I fear…I fear it is too late, and he is gone.”

  “Lost.” Her voice broke, the word wet and slow to emerge from her lips, and she opened her eyes, “…he is lost.” “Lost?” James’ voice rose to the rafters before he eased it back down, stomping down the sickness in his belly until the sudden trembling in his limbs gentled. “No!” He would not allow it, he would seek Mirena, Deniau, demand a favor of Etienne Saint-Cyr if he found the need. He would bleed, take the pistol he found between the stuffings of René’s great mattresses and deny another their life once more, but he would not allow that.

  “No?” The lady’s eyes fastened on him, surprise evident in her lifted eyebrow just as her sadness was clear in the bright gleam of her gaze. “You think to save him?” His thoughts were adrift suddenly, ideas sinking to the depths of black waters, pieces of memories stealing his breath. “Iwill save him, on my soul.” His soul would be empty, if he did not, and so it was not bravery that gave his words such conviction. His mind would not even grant him the ease of one face, but two, as though their lives and Fates were intertwined, and they would not look at him, did not look to him but left. Lost, aye, just as the lady had said. “I will,” he repeated on a drawn breath, the air letting him focus on something other than the sad stares in his head.

  “And mine,” the lady did not hesitate, did not pause to even consider his vow to be real, but stepped forward to question intently, “Will you save mine, Englishman?” For one short moment James thought the lady’s life in danger, and nearly swallowed his tongue to silence his reply when another thought occurred to him, letting himself choke on his question like the fool he was. Women were often sent to nunneries for reasons other than faith.

  He sought a path of delicacy and could not find it, blinking rapidly under her regard before finally stammering something to shatter the quiet between them.

  “L…Lost?” He had barely spoken and already she was turning away, dropping her eyes to the floor and letting loose a small cry. “There was never a way to save the child.” One slender hand came up to her chest. James thought she meant to hold her cross to pray, but instead she chose to clasp her other hand, gripping until her knuckles were white and red crescents marked where her nails pressed into the skin. Her head came back up, and as her eyes fell on him James heard himself gasping. “He carried the sin, my sin from birth.”

  “Lady?” His whisper did not stop the flow, the bitter salt that covered her cheeks. “In his eyes for all Paris to see.” Again, the low cry slipped from her mouth and James knew he flinched, rubbing his chest where an answering cry seemed to streak through him. “But I could not help but hold him, as long as God allowed.”

  “He…took…the child?” James felt the chill inside church along his exposed skin, hairs raised on the backs of his hands, his face tingling with the cold. “He…” The lady stopped there, blinking rapidly and lifting a hand to wipe roughly at her face. Her touch looked hard enough to mark her cheeks with bruises, and without thought, James moved swiftly to stand before her, pushing her hands down. His sharp intake of breath at his daring was nothing to the strangled scream that slipped from her mouth before she caught herself, and then, knowing himself to be already damned as mad in her eyes, James wiped the tears from her skin with his thumbs, smiling in a way he hoped she would not find threatening.

  For a small moment James thought he had calmed her, his gaze drawn to her eyelids as she lowered her eyes, noticing again the smoothness of her skin, and then found himself without the ability to speak once more as the lady lifted her head and regarded him warmly. Too warmly by far was the only thought his mind allowed, and then he was blushing, burning as the lady dropped her head to his hand and sighed.

  “And where is René?” At her whisper, James twitched, his shoulders jerking sharply and mayhap it was that which made her suddenly lift her head from him to stare, a soft line between her eyebrows that he thought was a frown. “I know it angers you that I ask.” She smiled, curving lips that trembled, and James felt the temptation to put a hand to her back in comfort.

  “The child?” The unease in her limbs spread to his, his muscles shaking though he knew she spoke of a different René, perhaps the child she had lost. The woman was mad, and James saw his own fevered imaginings with sudden light, gentling his hold on her though it would have been difficult to find a feather with a softer touch as it was.

  “I have not seen him since yesterday’s breakfast.” She took a hand from him to cross herself, then tore herself away so quickly that James was not certain he had seen her move. “I will look for him if you will not.”

  “Lady?” There was no sign of any others in the small church, but James still looked, turning back to face the woman when he heard the crack of thunder, saw the flash behind his eyes. Pain followed the vision, a strange throbbing at his jaw, and it was only when the blood trailed across his tongue from the cut in his cheek that James realized that the lady had struck him. She ducked away even as she had, moving from blows that weren’t there. “I…” he began, and knew not what to say, tasting the force of her fear now and swallowing it as best he could.

  “I will help you, if you allow me, Lady.” At last words came, as light and slow as the brightness returning to her eyes. As though she starved for his words she watched him, her skin so pale now she seemed of the same flesh as René. Then her head was moving, shaking to deny him or what he had promised, and her feet were slipping behind her to move her backward.

  “You are not…” She was gasping, falling silent before she could put a name to the face she had doubtless been imagining. “Who are you?” Both of her hands were at her cross, gripping and pulling so hard he could see the strain in the cord around her neck, and she was murmuring, moving her lips as though frightened into prayer.

  He had seen such fear before, an unceasing, incredible terror that had left René Villon weeping like a child, crying at the strength of a nightmarish vision that he had not named, had not dared to name. Or James had always stopped René’s tears a moment too soon, unable to bear the sound any longer even if it had meant another riddle unsolved. Perhaps James had also been frightened, and had not wanted to hear.

  The possibility of his cowardice was too painful to allow now, with so many in need and his shoulders the only ones not burdened, and before he could put a halt to his rambling speech he was renewing his promise, telling what had to be lies even if he meant them, for he had no way of doing what he vowed. He lifted his chin and inhaled to keep his voice clear of tremors. “I will aid you if I can, keep you safe if you allow it.”

  He could feel a weakness in his knees, and resisted the urge to kneel or fall to the floor, staying upright only through remembrance of René’s scorn of such poses; René, who went down on his knees without any loss of dignity, who did not understand penitence.

  René understood action, movements both brave and careless, where only the resulting blood had meaning. James co
uld only wonder how much more would stain the white shirts René favoured before he recognized its value.

  “I am sorry. I am sorry.” As though she felt the same weakness in her legs, the woman was falling softly to her knees, with an easy sort of practice though it must have been painful to land unprotected on the stone. James had only a moment for that thought, and then her quiet-voiced litany reached his ears.

  Lifting a hand to his face, he felt the frown there, the unhappy twist to his mouth, then lowered his hand to her head, drawing her eyes back up. “You have no cause to be,” he told her, the muscles in his cheeks stiff. He knew his scowl deepened, and was grateful at least that her fear had not yet afforded her a glance at his expression. Words caught in his mouth, left him chewing on empty air for a moment, and then he allowed his knees to give at last, bringing him face to face with her loveliness, to the tears trailing from eyes down to her chin, as convinced of her damnation as the child-René had been, burning in his fever.

  “And no one will make you feel so.” He bent his head as he spoke, clasping her hands between them and letting the dim light of the dyed glass fall over them as they prayed.

  Chapter Twenty

  The hat offered no protection to his bare neck, and the mist falling around him had slowly formed into heavy drops of water. They trailed easily through René’s short hair and down under the collar of his coat, soaking the shirt underneath. He shivered

  at how intimately the cold water touched him, his skin tightening into raised bumps of flesh.

  He had come to this place. It was cold here, but he did not lift his gaze from the mud-splattered steps leading to the doors of the small church. The feather along the hat’s brim was growing heavy, an ugly weight that would only be made worse for the time he stood here. It took a moment to reach up and toss the useless far to the side where James would not see and whine like a child at the waste of such a thing; for all that he seemed to aspire to priesthood, James seemed to mark the cost of all he saw.

  James had denied any desire to take holy vows. He had dared to grow annoyed at being addressed as a Father, frowning even deeper at René’s amusement at his anger. And then he had acted, as though determined to prove with his mouth if not with his words that he was a man of earth. As though the sky did not seek him out, sneaking through cracks in curtains to caress the lines of bared, gleaming shoulders. The touches of his hands gentle, the kisses of his mouth hard and fierce, his softness left only in his fingertips, easing down under René’s thighs as though uncertain of welcome.

  Another shiver took René’s body, showing the coat to be as worthless as the hat, another gift from Mirena that he had suffered through without need. She had laughed upon seeing him two days ago, standing in the rain at the harbor without a hat or a warm coat, then laughed again moments later, the constant mirth of a foolish woman who drank too much. But even drunk she had produced both items for him within moments, in the hands of the ugly Englishman, as though she had expected René to arrive bareheaded and wet.

  His annoyance at that was nothing to her delight at asking if he had also thought James most handsome with gold at his ear. Drunkard that she was, she had merely laughed more when René had bared his teeth.

  “But you may pierce him whenever you like.” Only a grimace from the pox-marked man had wiped the crude grin from her face and René had been glad to leave her. Glad to talk with Thierry, attend to business that would leave him free to return and collect James. Now, James Fitzroy who was not a priest, who had stolen gold in his ear and René’s promise to return, had come here. To the place where he could not be safe, to where there would be protection only from the rain. The child had more sense it seemed. Left to himself, James had come to one place that René would have forbidden, if he ever could have anticipated such stupidity.

  Even the soft rushing sounds of the mist were gone now, leaving a silence around him that only meant more rain on the way, the fierce sort of downpour that made peasants happy and trapped fine carriages in the mud. If he were swift enough, they might be back to the house before it fell.

  His chin rose, his eyes observing the lines of saints observing him, their faces set to reveal nothing. It was an ugly house for counting sins, and no matter what James said in there now, he could not equal René in the list of crimes committed. It was only left for René to wonder if he numbered among James’ sins, if he was the only one to feel their passion a sacrament.

  It was a thought that would have greatly upset his Maman though he would never speak it, and René flinched, glaring at the drops heavy on the lintel above the doors. There would be no staying dry and he allowed himself a shudder as the damp crept into his wound and chilled his bones. His blasphemy would not warm him.

  He ducked his head under the wind and walked up the steps. The door handles were warm for James had been there, and René yanked one hard with his better arm, swinging it out to the side and stepping in to replace it before it could close. Then he did not move, shivering at the feel of air at his back, stillness in his chest.

  Bent slightly as though he had only just risen from the floor, James turned to face the entrance. His eyes were wide already, startled, and they grew to twin moons to see him there, no doubt having never expected to see René Villon on the threshold of a church. Then the face flushed with a pretty colour, the mouth for once quiet as it fell open.

  “He has come!” That wrenching voice, high with emotion, was all that could have drawn his gaze from the welcome in James’ eyes, and René felt his head go back, ringing as it hit the thick wood behind him. He could see her now, her slightness held carefully behind the solid figure of James as though to protect herself from his presence, and he blinked at the renewed throbbing of old wounds. “The Devil himself, come for me.”

  “There is no devil here.” It was a wonder that James did not at least stammer in shame at saying such a thing now, but he did appear to see the disbelief crossing René’s face now. His jaw clenched, anger at René’s doubt or a desire to protect such a lovely figure drawing him to his full height.

  James had come here, to this place when the gleaming coils of the Saint-Cyrs would have offered a better sanctuary. James would put faith in her stark cloth, suppose her innocent by nature of her sex. He would protect that until death, without even a taste of her sin. Once he knew of that he would love her.

  “Still trying to reason with the mad, James?” James’ surprise seemed no greater than hers that René should speak now, the stinging words echoing louder than distant thunder outside. She would not cry for the beauty of the sacrifice being offered her; like the fools before her, she would not even see it. Prayers for his soul were all she had to give in return, words without use.

  Perhaps her prayers had preserved her for she had not aged. Her hands looked smooth; René could, if he tried, pull his eyes away to look at her hands, the one curled into James’ side, the other held out in the air between them. She dared to look pure as the fear made her shake; there should have been blood dripping from her palms.

  No marks of her life on her face, her brow as white and clear as milk, as it had always been, as though it was not only her mind trapped in the years before. She shuddered, and René twitched at the sign of her weakness, longing to spit in her pretty face.

  “She is so very pretty, James.” She had even been pretty in the nunnery where he had found her, when the price of the asylums had no doubt seemed too costly for those who had placed her there. James would have stopped for her, in her younger days. But she had not met James then, she had met the Devil.

  René wondered if James had noticed the brilliance of her eyes, how they belied the gentleness of her hands. He could see them, how they sought him out yet flinched from his gaze, and he knew that if he pretended now, and spoke as another, she would still follow. She had never resisted the demon for long.

  She still stared at him. She waited, and René put his hands behind him, flat on the wood of the door and even all his weight would not f
orce it open. He opened his mouth, then turned his head. With effort, he glanced over the interior of the church, blinking to see it empty of all but the three of them yet so well lit; candles that were too bright seemed to line every surface. A steady glow surrounded the sacristy, a circle that only led back to the heavy, black candelabras lining the aisle, drawing his gaze back to the two standing together.

  They had not been standing so when he had first pushed aside the oak barring his way, they had been twisted, limbs in motion. René looked to the floor, to the stones where kings and fools knelt to pray. Given a choice, James would still fall to his knees when he should stand and walk away, and René lifted his eyes to the hideous painting on the wall opposite him.

  She had wished James to protect her, but she would not have asked. There would be no tears for mercy and roasting in demon fires, there was only her loveliness. A heat rose in his stomach, tightness like pain, and René laughed at it, letting his head fall back to the doors that no longer parted for him. Far from him, James inhaled, a sharp gasp as though he also hurt, and René slid his gaze down and across to him.

  “I have the look of him.” His laugh quieted and James stepped forward, to bring himself closer or to stand before her as a shield. René put a hand to his shoulder, which ached, and watched the sudden gleam in James’ features, an awareness only growing sharper, and he could not stop his own sigh. Behind his glasses, James was blinking, trying for once to understand instead of turning his head from truth.Now he chose to understand. Now, just as he had chosen to come to this place, leaving René no choice but to follow his steps. “I told you to remain in the house.”

  “You told me to stay.” James countered immediately, though lowly and without even a frown. “You did not say where.” René tightened his lips before opening them again to speak, then fell back to silence at the movement of the white hands clinging to James’ body. They were whiter than sun-bleached bones, no longer the radiant pearl shades of moonlight as they pushed away from James.